Ships that Pass in the Night
by Mayonnaise Jane
Summary: When people meet only once in passing, sharing a brief time together, never to see one another again, they are said to be ships passing in the night. Such could definitely be said of the childhood friends of Willy Wonka. But what if the ships meet again?
1. Prologue: Adrift

**TITLE**: Ships that Pass in the Night  
**AUTHOR**: Marisa 'Mayonnaise' Jane G.  
**DISCLAIMER**: I don't own any Wonkas, Buckets, Loompas or a giant chocolate factory, I'm just borrowing them for a little while, and I promise I'll give them back in good condition.  
**SPOILERS**: The Tim Burton Movie, and the Book… and any overlap they have with the other movie. Oh just consider it totally spoilerific.  
**ARCHIVE**: Contact me please.  
**AUTHORS NOTE**: This story assumes a few things that may or may not be true, but just for the record, I've assumed the following: 1) Willy Wonka, at the start of the movie, was in his mid to late 40s and had not seen his father since the house had been uprooted from it's rightful place. 2) While many bizarre things grow in Willy's Factory, some things are still supplied by outside suppliers, ie. Milk, Blueberrys, apples, basically anything "normal." Of course they come in the same way chocolate goes out… no one gets out of the trucks.

So yeah… everything is based on those assumptions, and without them, probably falls apart. This is my first story submitted on this site, but by no means my first foray into the realm of Fan Fiction. It is, though, my first attempt at writing in this particular genre. My previous stories have all been in the realm of Science Fiction, and thus… this story doesn't fit so well in my under trafficked never visited personal archive site… which is probably why all the cereal stories there, have stalled out horridly. I'm hoping with a more interactive community to be able find the motivation to complete this story in a timely manner. I'm really looking forward to any reviews, good or bad, as I rarely get feedback from anyone other than my beta.

And this is the part where I stop rambling and get on to the story.

* * *

_Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;  
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;  
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,  
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.  
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_

* * *

**Prologue: Adrift**

The house wasn't there anymore.

He stood disbelieving in front of the place where his father's house no longer was. He hadn't thought it was possible. No one could move a house that quickly… it, just wasn't possible… but whether or not it was possible, was irrelevant. Just because it was impossible didn't mean it wasn't so. The house was gone, and his father with it, and Willy Wonka was alone.

He stayed there, thru the night, and thru the next day… not knowing where to go. He may never have moved, had the neighbors not called the police. Labeled an abandoned child… Willy was taken to the Long Road Home for Lost, and Unwanted Children, run by a soft spoken middle aged woman named Mary, in a tall, rickety building that looked from the outside as if it might come tumbling down at any moment. That did not concern the occupants however, as they seldom went out of doors. The boys and girls of the Long Road Home, lived and learned under that roof together, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as long as they stayed there. Over time, some of those dropped off by their parents, clearly and legaly abandoned, were adopted, and some, the lost, were found by their parents who had been looking for them all along. Willy liked to pretend he was one of them, that his father was looking for him, and would find him some day… that he wasn't unwanted, wasn't like the kids who's parents had left them there, because they didn't want them anymore: he was just lost… but his father never came.

The other boys picked on Willy relentlessly, teasing him about his ridiculous orthodontia, even after the visiting doctor had managed to disassemble it and remove most of the components. He was near constantly sick, those first few years. So many children in close quarters breed disease, and it seemed they were always passing the same flu back and forth to one another. Willy, having been so protected as a child, had an immune system out of practice dealing with such an abundance of microorganisms. As time wore on though, as he grew older, and new, younger children arrived at the Home, who didn't remember or know about his former metallic adornments, and Willy learned to be careful about what he touched, and wash his hands frequently to prevent the transfer of that blasted flu back to himself, an early caution that while useful at the time, would grow to an unhealthy obsession, things began to look up for him. While the younger children had been expected to sweep and dust, and wash the toilets, the older kids were expected to do the laundry, and fix the meals. In time, Willy Wonka found his place, in the kitchens. His love of sweets, repressed since it had cost him his home, began to grow again… and it wasn't long before he was on desert duty as a regular daily chore… and quite suddenly, everyone loved him.

His deserts defied all sense and logic, a fact of which he was well aware. But to Willy Wonka, nothing was definite, not even the laws of physics. He'd seen them defied, so he didn't much bother with them at all. His father taught him, when he had moved that house… that the impossible… clearly wasn't. The younger children clambered around him every day, begging to know what delicious surprise they would be treated to that night. They adored him, wanting to know everything about him all the time, competing for his attention. For the first time, in a long time, there was light in his life… he didn't need his past anymore, because Willy Wonka had a future. When the younger children asked him about his life before the Home, he pretended to have forgotten. Willy's new friends, however, were all at least 3 years younger than him… many of his peers still sneered at him behind his back. He ignored them though, and focused his attentions on the kids who loved him, or… perhaps they just loved his deserts. Either way, it didn't matter. Many children left the Long Road Home with no idea where to go or what to do with their lives… but Willy Wonka knew precisely where he was going.

The day after his 18th birthday, Willy Wonka left the Long Road home for Lost and Unwanted children… but he never forgot his friends. After setting up a small chocolate shop, he returned the following Christmas, to visit his old friends, brining free candy for his one time peers… but after that Christmas, for reasons known only to him, and to the kindly woman who had taken care of him and the other children for so many years… he would never return there again. In time he found he didn't need those little friends anymore. There were children all throughout the city who came to his shop, and they all adored him… by the time he opened his factory, he'd quite nearly put those children from his mind… with so many more in the world to please. The children who had been there that Christmas by then were grown… he could pass any one of them on the street, and never know it… a quick hello from an old friend who recognized him, though he did not recognize them… and they'd both go on their ways once more…


	2. Chapter 1: First Passing

**Chapter 1: First Passing **

"Mr. Wonka?" Charlie looked up from the prototype he was working on, a spider shaped candy with licorice legs and a gumball body, it was a little to insect like to be appetizing at this point though… something had to be done about it. But hours working on inventions along side Willy Wonka had not dulled his inquisitive nature. If anything, it had increased his tendency to question.

"Hm?" the chocolatier replied, looking up from his work. He had come, over the past few weeks, to expect such interruptions. Most of the time the questions were simple enough for him to answer, like 'Where do Oompa Loompa's go when they're not working?' or 'If all the Cotton Candy Sheep are Pink, where does the Blue Cotton candy come from?' but from time to time they were also irritating reminders of his past. Were he the sort prone to showing his emotions, his face might have betrayed a little uncertainty anticipating which sort of question this would be, but as he was not, Charlie was presented with the masking smile Willy wore 90 percent of the time, dropping it only in favor of the occasional genuine smile.

"When you were a kid… did you have any friends?"

"I'm sure I did," he replied, turning his attention back to his work and hoping the boy would take his phraseology, for the clue it was, an indication that he didn't care to discuss the topic.

"What were they like?"

Silence. Willy didn't want to answer the question posed to him. It's not that he didn't like his old friends… but he didn't like to remember the Long Road Home… how his father had never come for him… how he was an Unwanted Child. A few weeks ago, he likely would have responded to this question with a remark about mumbling, but he found, that it had lost its charm after Charley had confronted him on the subject, a few days ago, asking why he always accused people of mumbling when he didn't like what they were saying. Now he simply pretended not to have heard the question at all.

"What were they like Mr. Wonka? . . . Willy?"

He might have answered… except he wasn't there anymore. He was across town, and decades in the past.

* * *

"Hey WILLIMINA!" the scrawny teen sneered. He was a year and a half younger than Willy, but he'd been at the Long Road home a lot longer, and loved to torment the undersized newcomer. Ever since Willy had arrived there, 4 years ago, Justin had tormented him as best he could. It had bothered Willy for quite some time, but recently, he really didn't care. "WENDY Wonka!"

"Yes Love?" Willy answered, in a breathy voice, batting his eyelashes at the other boy, and flipping his ponytail over his shoulder. If he was going to make insinuations as to the true nature of his gender, Justin was just asking to be embarrassed… which he rightly was. Willy flashed a pearly white grin to his friends as Justin shuddered, turned tail, and fled.

"That's right Justin! RUN!" Annabelle called after her older brother. "That's what he gets for being such a brat." There was a tittering laugh from the assembled, all of them younger than Willy by at least 3 years. There were about 60 kids at the Long Road home at any time, between the ages of 6 and 18, and Willy being 13, that left just under half the kids in said age range. Many of them were to young to really be counted as friends so much as admirers, but a fair number of the older ones, as old as 10, or in Annabelle's case, just recently 11, could be counted as such.

"What are you making for desert tonight Willy?" Carline asked, "C'mon… you can tell us! We're your friends!"

"I told you," he replied, "It's a surprise."

They knew he'd never tell him, but they always asked anyhow. They also took it quite well when he insisted he could not tell them. They were after all, his friends. Many of his smaller admirers had taken to throwing temper fits in an attempt to get him to disclose the surprises… but to no avail. If they were going to be such brats about it he had no qualms about letting them flail round on the ground.

* * *

"Flashback?"

"Yeah," Willy answered distantly.

"I'm sorry I pressed," Charlie was mildly abashed. He knew he could be overly inquisitive sometimes, and while it didn't seem to do him any harm, it was still mildly disquieting when Willy had flashbacks. Whatever he was remembering, it was usually something he didn't much want to talk about.

"It's ok," he replied, dismissively, "How's the spider sweets coming?"

"Still too spidery I think… I think we need to cartoon it up a little more."

"We'll have to hurry… I want to have them out in time for Halloween. Big candy holiday that, and the perfect time for insect themed candy. We should do something with BATS," Willy was suddenly taken with the idea. Pulling his mind from the past and into the present buy busying himself figuring out how to work bats into candy… perhaps bubblegum bodies with licorice wings… packaged in with the spiders. Halloween licorice gum assortments.

"Yeah… Bats," Charlie answered in a quiet voice. He was still curios about the past… about Willy's past. He had been piecing bits of it together over time… he knew Willy and his father didn't get along, that Willy had lived somewhere other than his fathers house for much of his later childhood, and that he never mentioned his mother. Neither did Dr. Wonka, so Charlie had come to assume she had died, possibly when Willy was to young to remember. He'd seen photos in Dr. Wonka's office, in later visits, where Willy had on a lot of metal braces… but he didn't know much beyond that. Charlie was starting to wonder if maybe Willy had never gone to school. That would explain his apparent total disregard for things even Charlie often took for granted, like gravity, or just how much of something you can fit in a given space. He didn't suppose it mattered, since ever time Willy said something impossible was possible… he managed to make it happen.

Willy meanwhile was trying very hard to push the memories back out of his head. Every time there was a moment in his train of thought, where there was no mention of licorice winged bats, the faces of his childhood playmates would start fading into his minds eye. He didn't need them anymore… being adored from afar as he was, was different than actually having to be around kids. But Charlie was a kid… Charlie was a lot like his friends. They were good kids... nice kids. They had to be good kids. They didn't have parents enabling them to become brats like Violet and Agustus and Veruca and Mike.

"They were a lot like you," Willy said, not looking up from the contraption he was configuring to try and make the bubblegum bat torsos. And for the first time, in a long time… Willy wondered where they were now. Were they still nice? Were they still good? He was making chocolate to be eaten by children all around the world… What were they doing?

"Don't you talk to them anymore?" Charlie wasn't expecting an answer. So when he got one he felt emboldened to ask more questions.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know where they are," Willy kept his eyes glued to his work. It was hard to maintain his cheery demeanor sometimes, and eye contact only made things harder. So long as he didn't have to look anyone in the eye, he could keep it up nearly indefinitely.

"We could try to find them," Charlie suggested. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that though Willy rarely registered any distress on his face, there were tip offs to his mental state. It was like learning a new language learning to read Willy, but he knew this expression. Willy avoided eye contact only when something was upsetting him. Charley took this to mean perhaps he was upset about loosing track of his friends, which is why he suggested they could try to find them. "I'll bet we could find at least some of them… and they might know where the others were."

"Yeah… maybe."

Dinner at the Buckets was awkward that night. It hadn't really been the fact that he'd lost touch with his friends that was upsetting Willy, but ambivalence over whether or not it was a good thing that he no longer knew where any of them were. On the one hand, he didn't have to worry that they might not really liked HIM in the first place. There was always the possibility that they only wanted the sweets… like his suppliers. He corresponded with them by mail… some of them, like Boris Mangrove, the white milk supplier, (and occasional dairy cow supplier, for the whipped cream, and the chocolate milk cows) wrote short succinct letters concerned only with business… while Wendy McIntosh, the fruit supplier, who provided sour apples, acid free lemons and a variety of unique fruits that went into many of Wonka's fruit flavored candies, sent slightly more social letters, asking how things were going… how he was feeling. But they were business partners. They wanted his money, in exchange for their products, and they were both made fairly wealthy by his business. They had ulterior motives for associating with him just as his friends had at the Long Road Home… still, he preferred the Wendy sort over the Boris sort… at least they made an effort to be friendly.

On the other hand, what if his friends really had liked him? They might not like him anymore now that he'd not talked to them in so many years… but they might still like him if they had liked him back then, and that had it's ups and it's downs too. He'd have to be a lot more social than he'd been for many years if he Now Charley had mad his decision for him it seemed, and he was going to have to try and find them… he was going to have to see his old friends again, and they might not like him. In bed that night, he mentally he ran down the people he wondered about… and tried to picture where they were now… Annabelle was probably married by now. She always wanted to be a mother… and Samantha was probably a business woman of some sort, perhaps trading stocks or something. Perhaps Bobby had his own farm by now. He always wanted to get out and have his own farm with cows and chickens and things… Carline always said, she would never leave… maybe she was running the Long Road home with Mary… perhaps Mary had retired. Anthony was probably the owner of his own tailor shop, he'd always been quite good at fixing torn clothes, and taking up the hems on dresses and pants that were too long on the other kids. He imagined them each in turn in successful ventures, happy with their lives… though some niggling part at the back of his mind told him, they might not be so happy… they might be poor and destitute… but he didn't want to think of that, he didn't want to think he'd left them out there, suffering and struggling while he sat in comfort in his factory. He didn't know if he could live with that, unless it was Justin… that would serve him right.

And what of the Applegate Girl? Wendy Applegate. He'd only met her that one Christmas, but he often wondered about her. The tiny red-headed girl with the bright green eyes. She didn't know it was his fault what happened to her… she only knew it was his name they used to tease her. If it hadn't been for her… he never would have known where his father had moved the house… and he didn't know what happened to her either.

* * *

"Willy… we found your father."

"Oh!" Wily scoffed, with a slight roll of his eyes. If that was what was so important that she had to speak to him alone, he could save her the trouble. He didn't give a flying fudge bar where his father was anymore.

"Willy listen," Mary sighed, "This is important."

"The children are waiting for their candy," he replied with a somewhat forced smile… at that age, he had not yet quite perfected his perfect porcelain mask. Having known him since he was a wide eyed lost little 9 year old, Mary was not fooled.

"He WAS looking for you Willie. You weren't wrong."

"Is that so?" he asked, as if he didn't really care, though he did. If his father had been looking for him… maybe he really did care. Maybe he was just bad at looking…

"He missed you Willy. He searched for over a 5 years…"

"Clearly not long enough," he replied, sullenly, "How did you find him then… if he gave up?"

"Two years ago, he started dating a woman, Anita Applegate. She dropped her daughter off a few months ago… right after you left Willy… we recognized his handiwork right away," she crossed the room to him, slowly, a photograph in her outstretched hand.

From the sepia toned photograph, a sullen girl with dark eyes peered back at him, her head encircled in a brace not unlike that which he had once worn. Hers lacked a great deal of the accoutrements his had come to have near the end, a fact he attributed to the fact that the poor child had only been exposed to his father for a year and a half. Though it didn't register on his face, Willy was horrified. What difference did it make if his father was looking for him, if he was still doing this to children. He didn't care about his son… he only wanted his in house victim back. No.

"Her name is Wendy. She's 13 now. Best we can tell, she and her mother were turned out of your father's house when she tried to refuse further orthodontia. Her mother apparently blamed her for loosing them yet another place to live… we've got most of it off her of course, but she's still in bad shape. She's prone to hypoglycemia-"

"Hm?"

"Low blood sugar. She has a hormonal deficiency… and we suspect she wasn't always fed as a small child, so she tends to ignore her body when it's trying to tell her she should eat something. It's not a good combination, so she tends toward being sickley. I should warn you… she doesn't know that you're related to Wilbur… but some of the older kids have taken to calling her Wendy Wonka… and she hates it."

"I didn't like it much either," Willy quipped. There were those amongst the older boys who had called him, Wendy, or Wanda, or Willimina, making fun of his squeamishness and long hair.

"Just… be careful with her Willy. Sometimes you're a little… blunt."

Willy nodded in the affirmative. He knew he could be hurtful to people sometimes… and normally he didn't care. But his father had already hurt this girl enough. He would be friendly to her. Perhaps they could be friends, commiserate in their common dislike of his father. He smiled at the thought as he made his way back out into the common room, where the children were playing with their shared toys. There were no individual gifts under the Christmas tree at the Long Road Home… there never were. But there were gifts to be shared amongst all of the children. It wasn't the same. That's why Willy had come back, to give them each something of their own. Even if they would all be eaten by the next day… each of them would have something, for a while that belonged to only them. The children smiled, when they saw him, and ran over, clambering for his attention. The teenagers lolled near the back, uninterested in the chocolatier, or too wrapped up in teenaged pride to be seen clambering with the younger kids. Whatever was going on they'd see it just as well from the back as from the front, given that they were taller than the children in front of them. He could have continued enjoying the adoration, had it not been for the splitting pain in his shin.

"I HATE YOU!" came a shrill young voice from just in front of him.

Willy looked down and found himself face to face with the child from the photograph. It didn't do her justice. Her dark eyes, which had appeared brown in the sepia toned photograph, were in fact a deep, rich green… and her hair, a bright orange. He found himself focusing on the younger girl's teeth, which though quite white, were not fully straight. They must have been quite crooked when he'd started work on her… because she still had a slight overbite and a gap between her two front teeth.

"YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" she continued, kicking him with her other foot, pale freckled face nearly red with anger. Her task completed, she bolted from the room, the other children parting in shock to let her past… in the distance her footsteps could be heard stomping up the stairs… and a door slamming somewhere above their heads.

"The second girls ward," came a voice from behind him. Willy looked behind him and saw Mary there, looking meaningfully at him. It was her way of saying that he should go after the girl… and while part of him wanted to pretend he hadn't heard her… he almost felt he owed it to this girl, to do as Mary said. Taking a single ribbon wrapped Wonka Bar, he made his way out of the common room and up the familiar stairs. He had lived in this building for 9 years… but he'd never been in one of the girl's wards. The boy children lived, 6 or 7 to a room, but they each had their own bed at least. He wondered if it was the same with their girls.

Carefully Willy pushed open the door, peering inside… to his surprise, it looked precisely like the boys ward had, except that the blankets on the beds were mauve instead of brown. Sitting at the foot of one of the beds, with a book in her lap, was a very cross Wendy Applegate. She didn't acknowledge him as he carefully crossed the room, some part of him still feeling a little strange to be in one of the girls rooms… it was strictly forbidden that the boys go in the girls room when he had been a resident and some part of him wasn't sure Mary wasn't going to storm in at any moment, and put him in the corner for breaking the rules.

"Wendy?" he ventured… but received no reply from the girl, who simply turned the page in her novel and continued reading. "Look. I don't really much care what you think of me. I just, though I should bring you your Christmas gift," he placed the chocolate bar down on her book. Some ignorant part of him thought that this simple act would make everything better. After all, that's how he'd won the affections of the other children at the Home…

"Are you trying to POISON me you FREAK!" she demanded flipping the offending confection off her book as if it was scalding to the touch. "I can't have CHOCOLATE! I'm lactose intolerant on a MASSIVE LEVEL."

"Oh… I…"

"Just leave me alone! Just GO AWAY," she screamed, throwing her book at his head. At this point, Willy felt he'd done his duty to both her and Mary, and he most certainly did not have to take this kind of treatment from anyone. With a sniff, he turned and walked out of the room with no regrets… there were other children downstairs and THEY were good kids. It wasn't fair what happened to her, but it didn't entitle her to be such a brat about it.

* * *

"Good Riddance," he said out loud, "She was a brat anyhow."

She was. But that didn't stop him wondering. She could be dead now for all he knew, sickly as she'd been. Still… it had been bad enough for him, wondering if his father was looking for him or not… Wendy's mother had dropped her off there. There was no room for doubt for her. He didn't want to see her, she hadn't been very nice… but he wanted to know where she was… just wanted to know she was ok. Annabelle might know… she had seemed to be friends with her when he'd visited that Christmas… but who would know where Annabelle was? Where were any of them? Were they ok? What if they were all out there struggling to make ends meet… what if they were hungry or miserable? He had to know if they were ok… and there was only one way to locate his old friends. He would have to go back to the Long Road Home for Lost and Unwanted Children.

* * *

Author's Note: Apologies for any grammatical errors. I lost my beta after the Prologue. He hasn't seen the movie yet and doesn't want to be further spoiled. Also, this chapter was originally published as two shorter chapters, but they were too short for my standards, so I combined them. 


	3. Chapter 2: Starting Ports

**Chapter 2: Starting Ports **

"Where are we going?" Charlie asked, looking down on the town below them as he and Willy sailed over it in the glass elevator. He had been surprised to say the least when Willy had announced that morning that they were going out that very day in search of his old friends. Charlie had assumed they would start with some letters and phone calls… to try and locate one of them, but Willie seemed to have another idea of how to locate them, and when Mr. Wonka had an idea, it was best to just go along with it.

"There," Willy replied, pointing off into the distance at a fast approaching building. It was a rickety structure that looked from the outside as if it might come crashing down at any moment, but Willy knew better. It had been standing for many decades and would continue to do so for as long as it was needed. As they neared it, the Elevator began to drop altitude, coming to rest in the alleyway directly next to the building, where someone would be unlikely to run into it… unless they were looking for it.

"Is this where you lived?" Charlie asked, as they stepped out of the elevator, "After you stopped living with your father?" He looked up as they passed the sign on the front of the building 'Long Road Home for Lost and Unwanted Children.' He was suddenly struck with the logic of the situation. If he'd lived here, then this was the natural place to start trying to find out where the other children had gone, especially if any of them had kept in touch with the staff.

"I was just lost," Willy replied, answering a different question than the one that was asked. 'Not unwanted,' went unsaid… but was implied in the statement. Often times that's how it was with Willy… important things went unsaid, because he didn't want to say them. Taking a deep breath, he sighed, and rang the bell next to the door. This should have been easier than going to see his father… but it wasn't shaping up that way. It would get better though… Mary was here. If anyone in the world cared, it was Mary… the closest thing to a mother Willy had ever known.

"Hello!" a 40 something blonde woman quipped, answering the door pleasantly, "Oh… " her face fell as she looked past Willy then, at Charlie. "Have you come to…"

"NO!" Willy replied quickly and perhaps a little louder than he meant to, "No… no. We're just here to visit. I'm looking for Mary. Is she here?"

"Oh… yes… she's inside," the woman replied, stepping out of the door and gesturing for the two to come in, before running her fingers thru her curls, pleased that the man had not come to drop the boy off. Much as they enjoyed getting new kids in, it was always difficult when a parent dropped their child off. It was hard for the kids… she knew that from experience. She did not turn her back on the two though… the stranger on the doorstep looked familiar. "Willy?"

Willy had started thru the door, as she gestured, but stopped at the mention of his name, causing Charlie to collide with him from behind. He didn't even register the boy's quiet apology, so busy was he trying to identify the woman who knew his name. Granted there were a lot of people who knew his name, his being Willy Wonka, but the way she had said it, was as if he were familiar. Was it one of the other kids, stayed on to help Mary? Could this curly haired blonde be the sunny girl with the ringlets he'd known all those years ago?

"Carline?" he asked, "Carline McKinnon?" he ventured, stepping into the front room. It was exactly as he remembered it, small fireplace on the left, and on the right the tables where the children ate and studied. The ceiling seemed low to him, and was, but only compared to the high ceilings of his factory. Looking around, he reflexively removed his hat… Mary had a rule against hats in the dining room. Charlie came in behind him, allowing the door to shut after him, peering around Willy at the dark, but cozy room he'd stepped into. Charley had always assumed that wherever Willy had grown up, it was grander than this.

"That IS you Willy! Oh it's been so long!" Carline was happy, but also uncertain. It seemed to her that Willy had gone on his way after he'd left the Long Road Home, without ever looking back. It didn't offend her, many of the kids from Long Road would rather not dwell in the past. She had assumes he was one of them. She did have to wonder why he'd come back though. "What… what brings you to Long Road?"

"I want to organize a reunion!" he announced, as if it was the most natural idea. "Get all the kids we grew up with back together for a day, Annabelle, Bobby, You, Samantha… Anthony… even Justin." He didn't want tin invite Justin, but Annabelle would invite him if he didn't and he didn't want anything starting over that, best to pretend he wanted Justin and his like there, so they couldn't win out just by showing up. "It was Charlie's idea…" he indicated the boy, who was hanging very close, uncomfortable with the eyeing he was getting from the other children.

"Not exactly," he murmured, trying to take the attention back off himself.

"Don't be so modest!" Willy encouraged, completely missing the point. "You're the one who asked what my friends were like… and you're the one who said we could try to find them. Oh! Carline this is Charlie Bucket." He stepped a bit to the side, having the effect of both removing any obstruction between Carline's eyes and Charlie, and also maintaining Willy's personal space. Charlie had been standing just a bit to close for comfort, especially with the boy behind him… where he couldn't see him and weather or not the boy was going to run into him again as he had coming thru the door.

"Where would we have it?" Carline asked. The hope in her voice had more to do with a desire to see the inside of the factory, than anything else, but it was an uncertain hope.

"Here of course! That way, the kids can see you know… what we all grew up to be. What they can grow up to be!"

"That's a brilliant idea Willy," Carline replied, with a smile. It was a brilliant idea, but that wasn't the only reason she said that. Carline had always adored Willy when they were children… and she rather still adored him now. He was paler than he had been before… ashen even. And he'd cut his hair, but he still had the same magnetic purple eyes, and the same perfect white smile. "All we have to do, is figure out where to send the invitations."

"Doesn't anyone stay in contact?" Charlie asked, "Some of them have to have."

"Annabelle. Annabelle and Anthony. They're married now… 3 kids."

"Well that's just super! And she's got to know where Jeremy is… and Anthony probably kept in contact with Bobby… so that's 4 already!" Willy couldn't help but grin. If Annabelle was married, and Carline was here… then that was two already he'd predicted right. They were all going to be fine.

"And unless they changed their names, we can use directory assistance to locate the rest of them."

"Telephones?" Willy, shuddered. He didn't like to use telephones. They made him nervous. There were so many rules for talking on telephones that were different than face to face, and he had enough trouble with that.

"I'll tell you what," Carline said, "I'll do the phoning, if you do the food and the decorations."

"That'd be neato!" Willy smiled. "Don't you think Charlie? We should get right on that… bright red tablecloths and multicolored streamers and balloons! Lots of balloons! Oh this is going to be great."

"We should decide who to invite, Willy. Where's the cut off?"

"Oh, how about… the day I left? Anyone after that I don't know anyhow," that would exclude the Applegate girl, without specifically excluding her. It wasn't nice to exclude someone so specifically. "Oh… but we should ask Mary if we're allowed," he asked, "We'll have to do it someplace else if we can't, and that could call for an entirely different decorating scheme, wouldn't' it Charlie?"

"Yes," he replied, more humoring Willy than anything else. It seemed the change in decorating scheme was the least of their worries if they couldn't use this as a venue. This place was closed in enough that they could control who got in and out, and familiar enough to Willy that he'd be comfortable here for a while outside the factory… if they had to rent someplace, that would be an entirely other matter.

"She's upstairs… in the second girl's ward. One of the girls has a fever," Carline interjected. It just had to be that room didn't it. Willy blew into his bangs, mildly irritated. Much as he preferred not to express his emotions, they sometimes took Willy by surprise… and at those times, like this time they showed up quite clearly. He didn't like that room… not one bit.

"Ok. Well I'll go up and see her then," he said, falling back into a cheery demeanor, "And uh… Charlie you stay here with Carline and think of some more ideas for the decorations." And with that, Willy turned on his heel and headed for the stairs. The stairs were simple… they lead many places. He could very well be going to the third floor, to his old ward… and the first floor, when he arrived was still ok: there were 3 wards on this floor. He could be going to any of them. But he froze a few feet from the door to the 2nd girls ward…

* * *

"Mary! MARY! Wendy's having a fit!" 

"Oh dear!" Mary broke into a run, and Willy trailed after her. Truth be told he was more curios than concerned about the girl. What sort of fits were they talking about? Was she perhaps insane? That would explain her earlier behavior. "Willy give me a hand here!" Mary called out from inside the room, and he stepped up his pace. He froze a few feet from the door, as soon as he could see inside the ward. There on the floor, limp and prone, was the same once fiery girl who'd thrown a book at his head only hours earlier. It was a hard sight for him too look at. It made it harder to think of her as an irritable little brat who deserved whatever she got. "She's having a seizure," Mary explained, "She must have skipped breakfast AND lunch in all of the excitement."

"I can't find them!" Annabelle called, from the top of the stairs, "Did you move them?"

Taking a few steps forward, Willy stood in the doorway, not certain what to do. The girl hadn't been very nice to him at all… why should he care if she was sick. It didn't matter… did it? Mary was looking at him though, pleading with her eyes, for him to help her. But he didn't want too. Justin stepped around him, Justin Miller who was 17, who Willy hated, and who hated him. But it didn't matter, because Justin was too concerned for Wendy to care what was going on. He'd been teasing her only an hour before hand. He was one of those little brats who called her Wendy Wonka… how now could he be concerned for her health? Not to be outdone, by the likes of him, Willy finally moved, passing Justin and reaching Wendy and Mary within a few seconds.

"What can I do to help?" he asked.

"Just, hold her hold her neck and shoulders up like this… don't let her choke on her tounge… I have to go down to the kitchen for her glucose tablets," and with that, Mary tipped the girl into his arms. "I'll go down and get them myself Annabelle!" she called, heading out the door.

It was all Willy could do not to drop her right then… she was clearly sick. What if he caught whatever she had? But, glucose was sugar… if sugar could help, then maybe whatever it was wasn't contagious… of course not. It was probably just the hypoglycemia… and you can't catch that… right? It didn't look like what Willy had come to believe were seizures. She wasn't flailing around or any such… she was just, limp, and her eyes were rolled back up into her head, and she was blinking quite quickly.

"Hurry Mary!" called a young girl Willy didn't recognize from the doorway, where she was clutching a pillow, clearly frightened. "Hurry."

"It's ok Lisa… she'll be ok," Carline cooed, kneeling down to the younger girl. "This happens all the time."

"Hey, Wanda. Don't you have any candy on you?" Justin demanded. Willy blinked back at him incredulously.

"That's all glucose tablets are," Annabelle explained, "quick dissolving candy."

Holding Wendy with one arm, Willy searched his pockets with his other hand, certain that somewhere in his pockets he had some tangy treats, a quick dissolving sweet and sour candy he'd been working on. It wasn't yet on the market… he had planned to offer some to Mary, as a special Christmas Gift. Opening the end with one hand he gingerly opened the girl's mouth… trying not to actually touch any part of the inside of her mouth… ewe. Gross. He tipped the candy up on the end, dropping a few tarts into the girls mouth, under her tongue so she wouldn't choke on them. They dissolved quickly, and as they did… the blinking subsided, and her eyes fell shut.

"Wendy?" he asked quietly, tapping on her forehead with one silk gloved finger.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. This girl who'd only a few hours ago, professed undying hatred for him… but there was no hate there now. She looked up at him for only a moment, with an expression of pure gratitude, before she closed her eyes again, taking a deep breath, and relaxing back into his arms. Willy was puzzled… not sure what to do with the girl. She wasn't having a seizure anymore… could he just put her down? She might kick him again.

* * *

"Willy? Willy Wonka?" Mary had come out of the second girls ward, to meet him in the hallway. "Willy?" 

"I'm sorry, I was just, thinking," he replied, still staring at that spot on the floor where the Applegate girl had fallen.

"It's so nice to see you Willy!" Mary smiled, leaning on her cane. She hoped that his return meant what she thought it did. Willy had refused to return, so many years ago, when she had pressed him to far about visiting his father. If he had returned, she could only hope, it was because he was ready to, or already had seen him. She did not want to bring this up though, lest he leave again… it was clear from his reaction last time that Wilbur Wonka was as much a sore spot for him as anything else in existence. "What brings you back to our Home?"

"I wanted to organize a reunion… and I was hoping to hold it here."

"Oh I think that would be terrific Willy!" Mary smiled. She looked much the same as she had years ago, but had shriveled over the years, like a grape that turned into a raisin. She was still sweet, but a great deal of the life had gone out of her. "The children would love a party."

"And it would give them a chance, to see, that they can grow up to do great things, even without p-p-p-"

"Parents," Mary finished for him, without a second thought. He wasn't the only child at the Long Road home to grow up with an aversion to the idea of family. It was common enough for the children to declare that they no longer had any need of mothers or fathers. They would cope by pretending that they were independent already, each enabling the others to think that way. Not all of them had speech impediments as a result… and those that did often displayed it with different words. 'Parents' was hardly the worst of them… most of the kids from Long Road would never see their parents again. They wouldn't' need that word so often. No… it could be much worse she recalled a certain girl with an aversion to the word 'Love.' Everyone needs that at some point. Another child had an involuntary gag reflex every time he saw a parent and child together on the street, so much so that he tended to avoid the windows. Willy was hardly the worst off of the Long Road children.

"Those," Willy nodded. "There's no reason not to succeed just because you haven't got any."

"That's very true," Mary replied, shuffling toward the staircase. As they reached the top of the stair, Mary steadied herself on the handrail, and started to totter down the stairs. Without a second thought Willy double-timed his steps to stand next to her rather than a few steps behind, and offered her his arm. While adverse to unexpected physical contact, especially from strangers, Willy had little trouble offering assistance to the woman who'd raised him just as long as his father had. She had nursed him thru all manner of childhood ailments, and been there for every scraped knee and bruise. Mary was special, and deserved nothing less than the best.

"I saw him," Willy told her, when they were halfway down the stairs, "Three times now, over the past 5 weeks." He smiled at Mary, looking rather pleased with himself. He knew, after the last time he'd visited, how important it was to Mary that he see his father. That's why he hadn't come back after that Christmas, and why he'd sought out not her, but Charlie when he was feeling down over his refusal to join him in the factory. He didn't think he could face her having disappointed her like that, not going to visit him. But now he'd done it… and he hoped she was pleased.

"I'm glad," Mary replied, as she continued to totter down the stairs, supporting herself on the rail, and on Willy's arm. She did not fail to notice that his silk gloves seemed to have been traded in for more sterile, latex or rubber gloves. This worried her some. She had hoped his germ phobia would have decreased rather than increased with time. It had started out small… being careful what he touched… then when he returned that Christmas, he'd had the gloves, silk ones… and now they were impenetrable rubber, a downward slide if she'd ever seen one.

When they reached the ground floor, Charlie stood from the table, where he'd been looking at the pictures drawn by some of the youngest kids. They seemed to enjoy receiving attention and compliments from an older child. Charlie was glad to see Willie was back, starting to get a little uncomfortable around the other children. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn't help feeling afraid he'd be stuck there, with the other kids, and never make it back to his parents.

"Charlie! This is Mary. Mary. Charlie Bucket," Willy smiled, introducing the two.

"She's asleep now," Mary spoke to Carline of the girl with the fever, "I expect she'll stay that way for a few hours."

"Good, Good… Would you like to stay for lunch Willie?" Carline asked, batting her eyelashes, and flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"Uh… no," Willy replied, wondering for a moment why Carline was acting strange. "Charlie and I have plans to make… and a factory to run… sooooooo… we've got to go. C'mon Charlie."

"Yes Mr. Wonka," Charlie replied, darting for the door, he stopped only when he'd reached, it, not wanting to leave without Willy.

"Well, I'll be in contact," Willy said, putting his hat back on and backing towards the door, "good luck with the telephoning!" And with that, he and Charley ducked out of the door. Both had their own reasons to be uncomfortable there at the end, Charlie's a growing feeling of being uncomfortable in a place where children were left when they were no longer wanted, and Willy, a but perturbed by Carline's somewhat forward behavior. "Where did we put the-" _**THONK**_.

As soon as Willy had picked himself up and dusted himself off, the two were back in the glass elevator, on their way back to the safety of the factory, to work on plans for the reunion. Mary meanwhile, had made her way to a dining room chair, and sunk into it with a sigh.

"That was really un-called-for Carline," she sighed. "You should know better."

"I know… I just, hoped he might have changed some."

"He has… did you notice the gloves? He's gotten worse."

"He cut his hair."

"I saw. Who's invited to the reunion?" Mary asked, with a tilt of her head. She was curios to see if anyone had been excluded from the list, say for example a certain boy a year younger than Willy, who's name began with 'J,' and ended with 'ustin.'

"Everyone who was here up till the day he left."

"Wendy?" she inquired, recalling that Christmas, decades ago.

"I don't think he meant her."

"Invite her," Mary said, succinctly, "Don't argue Carline," she said, before the younger woman had the chance, "It's my House. My Rules… and I'm worried about her."

* * *

Author's Note: Apologies for any grammatical errors. Haven't found a new beta yet. I've read over it as best I can on my own. If this chapter 2 looks different to you, that's because the original first **two** chapters, are now rolled together in the **first** chapter. They were too short for my standards, so I combined them. 


	4. Chapter 3: Second Passing

**Chapter 3: Second Passing**

In the end, it turned out that the two people Mary most worried about, almost didn't come. Willy, even though he had been the one to start the contacts necessary to organize a reunion… well, truth be told Carline do most of the contacting… was experiencing rather a change of heart by the day before the reunion. That was an awful lot of people to see… and while the children had mostly ignored him that day when they'd visited, he knew it was because they all assumed he had been there dropping Charlie off. The cold shoulder was standard treatment for adults dropping off their kids. This time it would be clear to them there was a party going on, and one of the guests was Willy Wonka, the famous chocolatier. If it had been unpleasant being accosted by 3 over eager youngsters in the factory tour (Mike could hardly be classified over-eager,) how was he going to deal with 60 of them? And then there were the adults invited… including Jason.

"You can go Charlie. You're the one who wanted to meet them, and you can come back and tell me all about them," he said, "I'll stay here with the Oompa Loompas… they can't be alone too long. They get upset."

"I don't think there's much that can upset them."

"Nonsense! They're my workers. I think I'd know these things. They get upset, start throwing things, disturbing the candy sheep, shooting off the candy bazookas outside the firing range! It'd be bedlam!"

He rattled of the list so easily, that one might have believed him, were it not for the Oompa Loompa a few meters behind him, who'd stopped harvesting marshmallow puffs long enough to give Charlie a meaningful look, shaking his head. While they were a little strange to Charlie, he'd rarely known an Oompa Loompa to lie, but Willy did. That's not to say that Willy was inherently untruthful, he was simply prone to flights of fantasy, and to was projecting. The Oompa Loompas weren't the ones who'd be upset at all. Willy was.

"But Mr. Wonka, they're your friends, not mine. I won't know who any of them are," Charlie replied, "And you told Mary you'd be there."

Willy scowled. The boy was right. He told Mary he'd be there, so if he didn't go, then he wouldn't be able to go visit her anymore. He'd have disappointed her, and he couldn't stand to do that. Mary had a way about her when she was disappointed, that was frighteningly compelling, even to Willy. He'd only just been able to go see her again, after several decades… and he didn't want to loose that opportunity again. He wasn't one to be pushed around, but he didn't like to loose opportunities.

"Oh alright. But just for a little while. Kay?"

"Good. You'll have fun," Charlie paused to swallow the grass he'd been chewing, "You said it yourself, they're good people."

"That I did."

This same conversation was repeated several times that night, and then again twice the morning of the reunion. Willy insisted on changing his jacket 3 times… and had to go back to his residence for extra gloves, and then for his sunglasses, and then for his hat. All in all, though both he and Charlie had been up and dressed by 9am, they did not leave the factory until ten after noon. They didn't arrive at the reunion until a half hour after that, it being a fairly long trip in the elevator, and Willy stopping it twice on the way there, wanting to go home. Some part of him must have wanted to go to the reunion though… because both times he allowed himself to be convinced to go on. If he was truly adamant… that wouldn't have been possible.

"Ohhkeee… Ohhhkaaay…." Willy took a few deep breaths, holding up a hand to silence Charlie, who looked as if he might be about to ask if he was alright. "Don't be scared Charlie. This'll be super cool!"

Charlie nodded in the affirmative. He wasn't the slightest bit scared. Willy was projecting again, this time onto Charlie… but if it made him feel better to pretend that it was Charlie who was scared, and not him, then Charlie wasn't about to ruin Willy's fun… at least he seemed a lot better now then when he was coming up with random reasons to go back to his living quarters in the factory. He'd seemed flustered then, but now, he seemed much more confidant. It seemed that though he was often on the verge of falling apart, Willy would never allow himself the luxury of completely loosing it, at least, not when others were present. So, with the elevator parked in the alley, where they had left it the last time, the two stepped out of the elevator. They had sent 4 Oompa Loompas the night before, with the decorations and food for the party, which was good as they were now 40 minutes late for the start of the reunion. It would have been a pity if there were no food or decorations simply because the organizer of the reunion had a disorganized mind.

The two peeked in the window as they walked along the front of the building. The event seemed to be in full swing indoors, but they moved so quickly toward the door that neither Willy nor Charlie had a chance to see who exactly was there, and who wasn't. Willy assumed of course that they had all come. It would never occur to him that anyone wouldn't come. Willy rapped on the door, and smiled down at Charlie reassuringly, reassuring himself in the process.

"Willy!" cried a the brunette who answered the door, delightedly.

"Annabelle!" Willy replied, darting thru the door before she had the chance to try and hug him. "How's Anthony! I heard you two married?"

"He's great! He works at the Dry Cleaners, and I'm home with the kids," she gestured across the room at a dark haired boy, about 10 years old, playing amongst the others. He clearly wasn't one of the Long Road children, based on the quality of his clothing and shoes. "Little Tony's over there… and Missy… well I'm not sure where she's gotten too. You know how teenagers can be."

"Willy!" another voice from behind him, startled Willy and he whirled around to see a scruffy man, holding a bar of Fickelgruber's Chocolate. "How's the chocolate business?" he asked snidely.

"Jason! What a pleasure to see you!" Willy replied in a tone which had gone so far past sarcasm as to almost sound sincere again. "The Chocolate business, is terrific."

"That's good to hear," Jason replied, peeling the label off the end of the Fickelgruber Chocolate bar and taking a bite out of the end, making a great show of chewing it with his mouth wide open.

"Don't you mind him in the slightest, Willy," Annabelle sighed as her brother wandered off to mingle with the other reunion guests, "The little git stopped off to buy that chocolate bar on the way here. He's just trying to get your goat…. Oh Willy… who's your guest?" she asked, noticing Charlie.

"Charlie Bucket. Charlie, this is Annabelle Miller."

"Figliozzi now," Annabelle corrected, leaning a little toward her husband, taking his hand in hers.

"Annabelle Figliozzi," Willy corrected himself. "And that… git was her brother Jason Miller."

"And I'm Anthony Figliozzi," Anthony smiled, "But you can call me Tony, ok champ?"

"Thank you Tony," Charlie replied, "It's nice to meet you and Annabelle."

"Will!" a familiar voice called out of the crowd. Willy didn't even need to look to know who it was. There was only one person from Long Lane who ever called him Will, and that was Bobby. Willy was of course the only one who called him that, with everyone else calling him Bob. "Will! This is a great shindig you've put together!"

"Why thank you!" Willy responded, without mentioning that Carline and Mary had done a great deal of the putting together as well.

"Chocolate business is booming I see!"

"Yep," Willy replied, with a grin, "And what about you? Ever get that farm?"

"Fraid Not. Closest I get to live stock now is word problems." He paused for a moment, but explained further after noting Willy's puzzled head tilt. "I'm teaching Math now. Live stock in the word problems… you know… if I have 50 chickens, and 75 percent of them lay an egg each day, how many eggs do I have each day?"

"I don't care."

"I wasn't asking you," Bob laughed, clapping Willy on the back, before wandering back off into the crowd, "Good seeing ya Will!"

"Thank you for the candy bar's Mr. Wonka!" several small children chorused, sidling up to the conversing group. They were clutching ribbon wrapped Wonka Bars, from a table on the far side of the room and smiling from ear to ear. They laughed and ran off again, grateful for their candy. This made Willy quite pleased. They loved him, and they weren't asking for anything from him that the chocolate bars they already had. They were good kids… good like Charlie. This wasn't going to be so bad after all.

"You have weird hair," a teenaged boy said, and then ran off.

"I do NOT!" Willy called after him as he ran off into the throng. Had he been the sort that thought that way, he might have realized that the boy had been dared to say that… but Willy wasn't. He huffed, and sulked against the wall. They were NOT good kids… not all of them. There were still Justins and Wendys in the bunch. Petulant, irritable, mean spirited and just plain not good. At least she wasn't here too.

Carline had invited Wendy, as Mary had asked, but 2 hours into the reunion, she still had not arrived. It didn't really surprise either of them. Wendy was almost more adverse to human contact than Willy was. Heaven knew, she did not have his phobia of germs, no… Wendy was adverse to the social aspects of human interaction. People always wanted something of you, weather to push you around to make themselves feel bigger, or to 'help' you so you are in their debt, and they can call on you later, and press you into service for them, and god forbid someone might want her to love them like her mother had loved all those men, and that, as she had been shown time and time again, could only lead to disaster. Romance destroyed people… and yet they were obsessed with it. Carline, however did not have this aversion. She had grown lonely over the years, despite the companionship of the children and Mary… she wanted something else, and when Charlie had gone to play with the other children, and Annabelle and Anthony had wandered off she saw her chance to get it.

"I'm glad you came Willy," she said, sidling up to him as soon as she saw him alone, "I've missed seeing you." She did not flirt or flaunt as she had a week ago. She measured her response to be as unthreatening and gentle as possible.

"It's nice to see you too Carline," Willy replied uneasily, suddenly wondering where Charlie had gotten to.

"Sorry about the other day," she said, staring at her feet, and shuffling them a little uneasily. She was not in fact uneasy of course, but simply trying to make Willy at ease. Carline was a calculating woman. She had never known her parents, having been abandoned on the doorstep of an orphanage when she was an infant. She was raised there, and transferred to the Log Road home when the was 8, too old to stay in the Orphanage any longer. They didn't have the room for her there, and all of her peers had been adopted by other families. Only Carline had remained, and it galled her. She was not a cold woman, but she knew how to manipulate others when she had to, to get what she wanted.

"Kay," Willy took the apology into consideration, before looking away from her, watching the crowd.

"It's just… I've been lonely here, and I thought… maybe you'd been lonely up there in that factory… all by yourself."

"Not really."

Not to be so easily dissuaded, Carline, simply took up a spot next to him, watching the children and adults mill around, children discovering new playmates in the forms of the adults children, and the adults catching up on old times. These people had grown up together, so there was little focus on Willy. Mary had given the kids fair warning not to expect much, and the majority of them knew better than to cross Mary. This was probably for the best, as Willy would have been long gone by now were there too much focus on him.

"Wendy!"

Willy looked up at the voice. Annabelle was at the door again, and so was a diminutive figure dressed entirely in white, at least from what he could see. It's face was obscured by gauzy white cloth draped over the wide brimmed white sun hat perched atop it's head. Based on the name he assumed it was female, but he hoped it wasn't the Wendy who sprang to his mind.

"Annabelle!" the figure replied, wrapping her arms around the girl in a friendly hug. Only after the door had shut behind her, did the girl remove her hat, and then there was no mistaking her for anyone else. While she had traded in plaits for chin length flip, Wendy's hair hadn't lost any of it's bright coloring. If there was any question, with that hair, her eyes dispelled them. Few people had eyes such a vivid shade of green. It was in fact, Wendy Applegate.

"Who invited HER?" Willy scowled at Carline.

"I had to!" she replied defensively. "Mary made me."

Wendy hung her hat on the hat rack with some difficulty, straining from her height to get it on the hook, before unbuttoning her thick white wool coat. She stuffed white angora gloves in the right front pocket, and a matching scarf in the left, before hanging the rack as well. Underneath she wore, a black knee length pinafore, over a candy apple green button down shirt. On top of this, she had on a think forest green cardigan. Her legs were covered in opaque white tights, and black leg warmers, above black mary jane flats. The stiffness in the fabric of her un adorned black jumper made it bell out at the bottom hem, and combined with the apparently gravity defying outward flip of her hair, gave her a rather cartoonish appearance.

"Well if it isn't Wendy Wonka!" Justin crowed, swooping down on the woman.

"Don't make me hurt you," she replied, calmly, skirting the outside of the room. Claustrophobic by nature, Wendy did not want to advance into the crowd, but she didn't want to be around Justin any longer than she had to. Unknowingly she was making her way directly toward the same less crowded area where Willy had taken refuge. Willy, however was quite aware that she was coming toward him, and immediately started looking for somewhere else to go.

"Wendy Wonka! Wittle Wendy Wonka! Mrs. Wendy Wonka!" Justin continued to taunt, following her.

"MCINTOSH," she replied, with a similarly scathing tone as she had used against Willy all those years ago, "My name is Wendy _McIntosh_."

Willy might have noticed at this point that Wendy was not, as he assumed, a brat like Justin, that she in fact hated him, despite his apparent concern for her when she was ill, were he not busy noticing something else. He had known her name to be Applegate… but now she professed to be Wendy McIntosh. He knew a Wendy McIntosh… but she wasn't a chocolate hating brat. Wendy Applegate **was** a chocolate hating brat… this of course, was an entirely baffling situation for Willy… and an embarrassment for Wendy as soon as it left her mouth. She had intended to go by Applegate at the reunion, though she'd changed her name not long after she had aged out of the Long Road Home.

Many years after that, she struck up a business relationship with Wonka Candies, at the time of the re-opening of the great factory. It was a business arrangement held for over a decade, now, and in that time not once had she mentioned to Willy what her name used to be. Communicating only by post, he had no way of recognizing her, and Wendy, for her part, was not entirely apt to tell him. She had embarrassed herself thoroughly with her behavior at their first meeting, and she would just as soon prefer to leave that in the past. Nothing good had ever come of the name Applegate, the name of the woman who'd dropped her off, in person at the Long Road home for Lost and Unwanted Children, the same day Willy had left. Granted it had been Wendy's big mouth which had gotten the both of them expelled from her mother's boyfriend's house, but the girl could not really have been expected to put up with his constant harassment over her unfortunate habit of thumb sucking. Mother would find another man to live with soon enough, but this time, without Wendy to "screw things up." Her mother never returned for her, which may have been for the better, given the woman's deplorable habit of locking her daughter in the trunk of the car in which they lived when she was between boyfriends, whenever she needed to leave Wendy alone.

When she looked up then, to find herself not 6 feet from the very confused chocolatier, her pale freckled face, took on a similar pink to the one it had that Christmas, decades ago. But this time it was not a flush of anger… but the blush of embarrassment. Though she would tell anyone who asked, that she held a very low opinion of the man, she was always lying… she just wasn't self aware enough to know it. Or perhaps on some level she was, and she was just in denial. Either way, she had very little grasp on what to do in this situation. The clever, obstinate part of her had already formulated a scathing insult, ready to fling it at him, of only the other part of her would let her. But that part, the other part of Wendy McIntosh, remembered what it was like waking up in his arms, and for once in her life, not feeling an instant repulsion to the touch of a boy. So… with this dilemma rattling around inside her head, Wendy did the only thing she could do. She fled.

As she darted around Willy and up the stairs… his first thought was that she was going back to the second girls ward. But she couldn't be. She didn't live here anymore. She was in fact going to lock herself in the bathroom, but as it stands, that is entirely inconsequential, because Willy was not about to follow her. He was busy with a very disturbing thought. Wendy Applegate, weather or not he would admit it now or then, had struck him in the photograph, as a perfect porcelain doll, so clean and pale, a kindred spirit who knew what it was like to live under the oppressive thumb of Wilbur Wonka, but her personality had been her downfall. Who would want to be around someone so angry? Wendy McIntosh on the other hand was a faceless specter, with a pleasant personality, whose letters he looked forward to receiving. Taking the appearance of the one, and the personality of the other, he found a very pleasant person forming in his mind… a person labeled with a word he had long ago come to disregard "impossible." But this time… he suddenly felt the word had meaning, and weight. That person was impossible. What he had just seen was only the Applegate girl, masquerading as Wendy McIntosh.

"Despicable," he muttered to himself, turning his attention back to the room, "Brat."

"Freak," Wendy muttered, to herself, upstairs in the bathroom, "Lunatic."

"Good Riddance," they muttered, to themselves.

* * *

Author's Note: Still no beta, so sorry for the grammar. And thank you to the 4 people who have this story on Alert. It's nice to know somone's reading. 


	5. Chapter 4: Chocolate Hating Brat

**Chapter 4: Chocolate Hating Brat**

Wendy huffed and sat down on the edge of the bathtub, trembling, her thumb finding it's way to her mouth without her mind knowing what it was up too. She should have stayed at home. In all likely hood she WOULD have stayed at home, had Carline not mentioned in passing, that the organizer of the event was Willy Wonka. It had been decades since she'd seen him face to face, and she had intended to go by her old name, to keep a distance between her new life, and her past outbursts… It was safe enough to be civil, even friendly in her letters, because he didn't know who she was. He never saw her face to face… but in person, Wendy was rarely civil to anyone in possession of a Y chromosome. With her mother's history of serial dating, relying on men to support and feed her and Wendy, she had little choice but to follow in her footsteps or rebel as much as possible. She chose the latter.

It should come as no surprise then, that Wendy was a solitary individual, with little interest in men or dating. All that mattered to her, was that she had a consistent buyer for her home grown acid free lemons and sour apples, and other the other exotic fruits she grew in her orchard. So long as she had a buyer, she had money to pay the mortgage, and utilities, and so long as she had that, she seldom had to leave the fenced in sanctuary that was her orchard, and the small home within it, and so long as she didn't have to leave, she didn't have to expose herself to that despised plague upon the planet. People. The human obsession with other people was baffling to Wendy, as she found them, with the exception of her childhood friends, utterly terrifying.

Perhaps that's why she rather liked the eccentric chocolatier, which whom, with the exception of that one Christmas he had visited the Long Road Home, she had contact only by post. He never wrote of women or friends, of social strategizing or who was dating whom now that shouldn't be and how was he ever going to deal with the friend who thought he'd said something he hadn't. He lacked that human obsession with other humans, which she perceived as a massive flaw, and prattled on only about candies and inventions, and all manner of things which had nothing to do with other people… Or perhaps it was for more selfish reasons she refused to admit even to herself. Perhaps she enjoyed her correspondence with Willy, for the same reason she still had in her possession, the photograph taken of all the children that day with their visitor. While she would never admit it to a soul, 19 year old Willy had made quite an impression on 13 year old Wendy, in that way that one can only to a child of that age. A child's crush, left festering for so many years, that, in order to conceal it even from herself, Wendy would resort to any insult to prevent it's discovery.

At least that's what she told herself. But if that was the case she'd have spat in his face just now. Instead she was locked in a bathroom, a 42 year old woman sucking her thumb and missing the party… missing her chance to catch up with the only people she could ever really be herself around, and in a few hours, she'd slink out the back and return to her orchard, and likely see no one but her numerous cats for the next couple of decades.

This was all Willy's fault. That's right. She wouldn't be stuck in this bathroom if it wasn't for him. She wouldn't be in here missing the party, and the food…

"Oh lor, whashime isssid?" she whispered to herself, words slurred by the digit pressed to her soft pallet. Scowling, she removed her thumb from her mouth, unbuttoned her cardigan, and reached inside to unzip the right hand breast pocket of her jumper, and pull out an apple shaped gold pocket watch, by the loop at the top if it. It had no chain… it had no need of a chain, since the pocket it lived in zipped. "It's two thirty already. Damnit."

She realized then that her trembling had a lot less to do with her emotional state, and a lot more to do with her low blood sugar level. She hadn't had a seizure in decades, thru a combination of having grown more attentive to her condition, and the fact that the issue was much worse when she was a growing child. Wendy felt it unfair that it should have plagued her so and still left her so short that she had to strain to reach a hat rack. Still, at 4 foot 10, she supposed it could have been worse. She could have been much shorter. Now however that was not her primary concern. Her primary concern was stopping the trembling.

She unzipped her left hand breast pocket, reaching inside… and finding nothing. Mentally she berated herself for leaving her candies in her coat. She was going to have to go downstairs again. With all those people… and Willy… no. Maybe she could get one of the kids to get something for her, so she could stay inside. Or get a message to Annabelle, or Mary. Young as she was compared to most of the guests here, she didn't have many close friends. Acquaintances were plentiful, but really only Annabelle and Carline of the older girls had liked her much. Annabelle was probably just making up for her brother. She was always doing that… and Carline, Carline was overnice to everyone.

"Wendy?" came a knock at the door, interrupting her musings, "It's Annabelle. Can I come in?"

"Yeah… sure," Wendy sighed, standing to open the door, and falling down as soon as she did.

"Wendy?" Annabelle exclaimed from the other side of the door, hearing the thud.

"I'm ok!" she replied, standing again, and unlocking the door. "Just… stood up to fast is all." Her head was still spinning some and she steadied herself against the door. It was a familiar feeling, one she had only come to have once she had come to the Long Road Home. There was little chance of her standing up too fast when she was hungry with her mother, as she spent most of that time locked in the trunk of the car, a space in which there wasn't space for her to sit up straight, never mind stand.

"When's the last time you had something to eat?" Annabelle asked, recognizing the dizzy spell as a sign of impending hypoglycemia.

"Breakfast… 9ish."

"Here…" Annabelle dug thru her pocket, and came up with a sour apple sucker, offering it to Wendy, "have this." She had confiscated the sucker from her son earlier that day, when he tried to have it for desert after breakfast. She'd buy him a new one after the reunion. She was by no means a candy hating mother, but one who believed that candy was for eating only after lunch.

"Thanks," she replied, putting down the toilet seat, and sitting down on it. "I made an ass out of myself down there, didn't I?"

Annabelle was puzzled of course, but then Annabelle did not know that Wendy had been exchanging letters with Willy for the past decade or so. She did however, remember Wendy's crush on him, years ago. Though the girl had never admitted it, it wasn't hard for someone like Annabelle to see. The way she treasured that photograph of the group of them with Willy that Christmas, the way she traded in the grape hard candies she had always had in her mouth in place of her thumb, for all manner of Wonka candies, and even the way she repeatedly referred to him as a lunatic, and a 'bloody madman,' were all covert indications of her affections.

"No… I don't think he's all that offended you don't like people calling you by his name. People used to call him Wendy, and **he** didn't like **that**."

"Thas nod awl there ishh do id," Wendy replied, not bothering to remove the sucker from her mouth. "Nawee nyows Wenny Abblegade an Wenny Migindosh ahh deh sssame pehson." When her explanation garnered only further confusion from Annabelle, she pulled the sucker from her mouth, using it to illustrate her point, "Wonka's sour apple suckers don't irritate the insides of your mouth like other sour apple candy, do you know why?"

"No… no one does."

"I do. Read the label," she said handing back the wrapper to the pop. "What's missing that's usually in sour candies?"

"Acid…" Annabell replied, reading thru the ingredients on the label, "There's usually acid in sour candies, citric acid."

"And malic… so what no one knows is not, why it doesn't irritate your mouth if it's sour, but how it's sour if it doesn't irritate your mouth."

"Do you know?" Annabelle asked. The reversal of the question was a clever trick, but she knew better than to think that Annabelle would set that up simply to show of her overblown intellect (and the woman did have an overblown intellect.) Wendy wasn't the vain sort of person who would engage in a discussion of trivia simply to make it known that she knew more than you did. Whatever the poupose of this line of conversation, it had to be the set up for a bigger payoff than that.

"I can't tell you. It'd be in breach of my contract."

"You… you have a contract with Willy Wonka?"

"McIntosh Orchards has a contract with, with Wonka Candies."

"And you never told him, you were you," Annabelle concluded, out loud. "Except you just did downstairs… Oh I could just kill Justin."

"Ishz nawd hish fawlt," Wendy replied. "Ah med an ash oud awf myzelve awl ahn my owm." She sighed and sucked on the candy again, twisting it in her mouth to aide in the quick dissolution of the hard substance. While she would usually prefer to savor her candy over a period of time, she was too sugar deprived to really be concerned with how it tasted. As least it tasted better than the god awful grape candies her mother used to give her as a kid when she'd start twitching. Those hadn't tasted like much of anything at all.

"Come on back down Wendy, just stick close to me, ok?"

"Kay," Wendy replied reluctantly. She would have to leave sometime anyway. The sucker would only hold her over for so long, and at least this way she was with someone else. She made her way down the stairs, a step behind Annabelle. Most of the partygoers had assumed she had run off to escape Justin, and so they paid her no heed when she returned. That had been how things were when they were all kids, so no one felt there was a reason why should it be any different now.

"And so that's how I wound up here with Mary," Wendy and Annabelle heard Carline explaining.

They looked over to see a very glazed over looking Willy Wonka, barely nodding at the woman's explanation, apparently scanning the crowd of kids to see where Charlie had gone to. Carline was sidled up right next to him, inside what one would generally consider to be his personal space, which explained why he was looking for an out.

"Tangy Tarts" Wendy muttered, pulling the sucker from her mouth and stealing herself to go over there.

"What?"

"Look… I still think he's a nutcase… but, he did help me out… and you know how I hate to owe anyone," she turned on her heel, and marched right over there… to apologize for that Christmas, and, in the process hopefully, distract Carline from her misguided intentions. Wendy liked Carline… really she did, but the woman was sick, sick just like her mother had been. Reaching the two… she stood square in front of the chocolatier, but a good 2 feet away. It wasn't a calculated move on her part… she didn't like to get to close to guys, and effeminate hairdo not withstanding, he was in fact a man. "I'm sorry I never told you who I was," she said, her eyes searching for his, "I was quite disrespectful that day. I-"

"Yes you were!" Willy interrupted, ignoring the first half of the apology. He still wasn't ready to acknowledge that Wendy the hypoglycemic redhead and Wendy the fruit supplier were the same person.

"-apologize," Wendy finished, without flinching.

"Oh! Well I suppose that makes everything better!" Willy replied in the same round the bend, meta-sarcastic tone he'd used earlier with Justin, "As long as you're sorry."

"Take it or leave it," Wendy replied stoically, "But I do mean what I said." Though she would not admit to herself why, she knew she was on the brink of tears, but she did not allow it to show on her face.

"Annabelle have you seen Charlie?" Willy completely ignored Wendy's last statement, "I think it's time we were leaving."

"Don't bother," Wendy replied, heading for the coat rack, "I know where I'm not welcome." Her egress was both a statement, and an escape. She has to leave before she broke down in front of all these people. Wendy may have been a social wreck, but she would not allow herself to be a wreck in a social setting.

"Wendy, you haven't had lunch!" Annabelle followed her.

"I'll get something from a street vendor. It's been years since I had a good hot-dog," she replied, hurriedly pulling her coat on. "It was nice seeing you again Annabelle." Hat on, and coat buttined, Wendy escaped the reunion back into the October snow. "Ah nyever shada gume heah," she said to herself, "Styubid. Styubid." Wendy held the sucker in her mouth as he pulled on her scarf and mittens… stomping off into the snow, realizing of course, that only an insane hot dog vendor would be out in this weather. She fruistratedly kicked the pavement beneath her feet, balling her fists. Feeling the sudden warmth of tears streaking down her face, Wendy ducked into an alleyway, lest Annabelle follow her. She didn't want to be found.

"I still think I aught to leave," Willy said as Annabelle came back to where he stood, "Carline's starting to freak me out."

"What happened to you Willy?" Annabelle scowled, "Why the hell don't you go after her?"

"Then you haven't seen him?"

"You used to care about people other than yourself But now, you're a complete narcissist! Selfish BRAT."

Willy's eyes went wide at the last statement. "I'm not a brat Annabelle: She is. She's nothing but a selfish little **chocolate hating brat**." He knew he wasn't a brat… but he wasn't so sure about Wendy anymore. Saying it again helped to solidify his thoughts. Willy Wonka was not a liar, so if he said it, then it had to be true. Wendy Applegate **was** a Chocolate hating brat. She was.

"She's lactose intolerant Willy… how the hell can she hate something she can't even try without giving herself stomach pains?" Annabelle replied, exasperatedly. She knew he knew that. She had heard Wendy scream it at him, from the bottom of the stairs. Sixteen when Willy had returned that Christmas, Annabelle had been at the back of the group, smiling as the younger children clambered for his candy as she'd once clambered for his deserts, so it hadn't been much of a challenge at all for her to slip away and listen at the bottom of the stairs. She'd gone up as soon as Willy had come down, to find Wendy crying and sucking her thumb, not caring that she was putting her teeth back out of whack in the process.

"There you are Charlie! Get you're coat… we're going."

"Okay," the boy skittered off to the coat rack. They'd been there nearly two hours by this point, which was about as long as he'd expected them to stay. There were far to many people here to expect Willy to stay much longer than that regardless of the things going on.

"Willy," Annabelle sighed, as he retrieved his hat, and whisked Charlie out the door. The two made a bee-line for the glass elevator, Willy pressing the external button to open the doors, and usher Charlie inside. But Charlie did not get in the elevator. He paused, straining his ears for a sound of tiny hiccups, further into the alley.

"Do you hear that Mr. Wonka?"

"No," he replied, without even listening, "Get in Charlie, we're going back to the factory."

"Someone's crying," Charlie replied, stepping around the elevator to walk further down the alley, toward the sound, which suddenly stopped.

If Wendy had turned the corner directly when she'd come to the alley, she'd have run right into the elevator, parked there… but because she'd gone further, before she realized there would be no hot dog vendors out in that weather, she had missed it. If she had known it was there she'd have found a different alleyway to cry in. She didn't like people to see her cry. Upon hearing Charlie's assessment of what she'd been doing, she squatted down, wrapped her arms around her knees, bit her lip and held her breath, hoping that if she was small enough, and quiet enough, he'd believe that the sound had been in his head, and would just get in that elevator and leave.

"It's Wendy," Charlie said, standing in front of her. He wasn't sure what else to say about the situation. From Willy's attitude toward the woman inside, he figured he may as well have said 'It's Mrs. Gloop.'

"Well then it's none of our concern Charlie. Lets go."

"Go on," Wendy said, weakly, lifting her head from her knees, "I'll be fine."

Charlie couldn't see her face through the layers of gauzy fabrics draped around her hat, but he didn't need to, to know she wasn't going to be fine. She'd just go on crying after they'd left. Sweet child that he was, he didn't want to leave her there like that, even if she was as Willy declared, a brat, though he wasn't positive about that precisely. He didn't know her well enough to make that assessment, but, given Willy's tendency toward jugementalisim, he wasn't going to take the man at his word.

"You heard her… come on Charlie," Willy stepped into the elevator, "Hurry up or I'm leaving without you!"

Charlie stood for a second, staring down at the woman squatting in the snow, "I'm sorry," he said to her, "I have to go." He wouldn't put it past Willy to leave without him, and he didn't know how to get back to the factory from there. The long and short of it, was that Wendy was an adult, and Charlie was a child… he had to trust that she would be able to take care of herself.

Wendy didn't move from where she was until the elevator had taken off. She closed her eyes focusing on the candy in her mouth, lavishing over it with her tongue. The truth was, she didn't really care what was in her mouth, be it her thumb or a hard candy… but she felt much safer and much better when something was there. Regaining her composure, Wendy snaked a hand up under the draperies of her hat, and wiped her eyes dry, before stepping out of the alleyway into the street… going in the opposite direction she had been before. The elevator had gone the direction she was going before… and she had no intention of going that way. She just needed to hail a cab… and she'd be on her way back to the safety and sanctity of her orchard.

Meantime, above the city, Charlie scowled at Willy, who was making a concerted effort to avoid eye contact with the boy. He felt a little bad leaving Wendy in the alleyway like that. She HAD been apologizing, and what if Wendy Applegate and Wendy McIntosh were the same people? Then he'd lost one of his only friends just now… and a fruit supplier. He wasn't sure which he cared about more… but he wanted to say it wasthe fruit.

* * *

Author's Note: In case anyone's wondering, Wendy is **not** meant to be diabetic. She's prone to fasting hypoglycemia due to a growth hormone deficiency, which is also why she's so short... oh... and still no beta.  



End file.
